Anton Corbijn - Allegro

Monography
2018
Text in English and German by Els Barents
Publication by Schirmer/Mosel
111 p. with colour and black & white images

In recent years Anton Corbijn (b. 1955) is mostly known as director of movies like Control (2007) and The American (2010). Next to directing movies, his love for photography remains strong. During his thirty-year career he worked together with numerous musicians and actors and became the ‘personal photographer’ of bands like U2 and Depeche Mode. Corbijn also directed many music videos for Joy Division, Nirvana, Coldplay and Johnny Cash.

His photographs have been exhibited worldwide in leading galleries and museums including the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg , the Photography Research Centre in Boston and the Museum of Art in Vienna. Several monographic books concerning the photographical work of Corbijn have been published.

During his long lasting career the work of Corbijn forms a major influence on international music and portrait photography. The creative, off-beat way he has been photographing performing artists since the 1970s has become his personal trademark. The atmospheric and often melancholic black-and-white aesthetic from his early years contains a subtle balance between documentary- and portrait photography. Implicitly questioning the boundaries between different photographical genres became characteristic for Corbijns work and had a big influence on photography as a whole.